Ben Shapiro And Steven Crowder Are In The Midst Of A Hilarious Feud

YouTuber and right-wing culture warrior Steven Crowder has ignited an ugly civil war within the conservative entertainment complex, lashing out at a lucrative contract offer he received from The Daily Wire, a conservative media company founded by Ben Shapiro.

The feud was sparked after Crowder ranted about the contract offer during an episode of his show, Louder With Crowder; while Crowder didn’t specifically name the outlet the offer was from, he used strong language to push back against the deal, stating:

“Big Tech is in bed with Big Con. The people you thought, the people I thought, were fighting for you, a lot of it has been a big con.”

Crowder went on to claim that if YouTube were to demonetize his channel, he would suffer a financial penalty, his payments cut until his channel was monetized again. This is a concern for Crowder, who is a famously provocative “edgelord,” and regularly crosses the line into homophobia, anti-semitism, racism, and misogyny, which often results in YouTube demonetizing his content on the platform.

“If any of the major platforms issues a content strike such that Crowder cannot be monetized on such a platform, the fee will be reduced by 25 percent,” Crowder read aloud from the contract.

Crowder’s point was that conservative media was bowing to the “censorship” demands of “Big Tech,” a frequently discussed topic within the right-wing media sphere. Crowder went on to dismiss the deal as a “slave contract.”

A day after Crowder’s rant, The Daily Wire’s chief executive Jeremy Boreing released an hour-long response video (following the tradition of all gossipy YouTube feuds), delving into the details of the contract offer.

Boreing confirmed that Crowder was indeed referring to The Daily Wire, and claimed that Crowder had misrepresented the details of the deal. Boreing explained how The Daily Wire would take on the bulk of the financial burden if Crowder’s controversial segments resulted in lost advertisers.

Boreing also insisted that The Daily Wire was not siding with Big Tech censorship, but was, in fact, a victim of it (for context, The Daily Wire is one of the most popular outlets on Facebook, by a significant margin, and appears on the top ten Apple Podcast Charts of 2022).

Boreing went on to highlight a mind-blowing detail that Crowder, for some reason, failed to mention; Crowder was being offered $50 million over four years, and would only be contracted to provide 192 episodes a year, which amounts to four 90-minute broadcasts a week (minus a minimum four-week vacation).

Not too bad for a “slave contract.”

Boreing stated: “Steven’s philosophy appears to be: ‘I deserve to be paid millions and millions and millions of dollars, whether my show drives the revenue or not.’ That’s not a business relationship. He’s looking for a benefactor.”

Ben Shapiro soon jumped into the drama, tweeting out Boreing’s response video and saying he wished Crowder “nothing but the best.” Shapiro discussed the controversy during his Daily Wire program on Thursday, stating, “this is typically how contracts work.” Shapiro went on to say:

“There is something rather nasty about attacking people who have been friends for over a decade – colleagues, defenders, for over a decade, on the basis of your own misinterpretation of a document that offers you $50 million over the course of four years.”

On Thursday night, Crowder escalated the feud even further by airing a recording of a taped phone call between himself and Boreing, in which Boreing can be heard saying that right-wing media figures “get to be wage slaves for a little bit” while building their brand with The Daily Wire.

The drama was beginning to rival a simmering feud between catty YouTube beauty influencers, and only grew spicier, as Shapiro returned to Twitter to repeat the assertion that Crowder was being “nasty,” writing: “It’s nasty to attack my company and DW+ hosts as “Big Con” by lying about the meaning of a non-binding term sheet.”

Shaprio wrote a lengthy tweet thread breaking down the timeline and dirty details of the drama, fuming about the recorded phone call, and pointed out: “If your show loses money, you lose money. This is how capitalism works.”

Facts, after all, don’t care about your feelings.

Shapiro concluded his Twitter thread by accusing Crowder of being “a shill for YouTube,” writing: “You know who knows this? Steven Crowder. That’s why he has a ‘Piss Off YouTube’ segment in which he deliberately does not say things that will get him kicked off YouTube, and directs people behind his paywall. He must be a shill for YouTube or something.”

The feud sparked the interest of progressive influencers, who were shocked at the amount of money that could be made catering to the grievances of conservatives. Turns out, feigning outrage at, like, woke M&Ms and horny music videos is a great way to get paid!

Other conservative influencers like Jordan Peterson and Candace Owens entered the ring (both employed by The Daily Wire), with Owens labeling Crowder’s video “a total bitch move.”

Peterson, on the other hand, seemed to initially side with Crowder, tweeting out Crowder’s video with the caption: “on the hypocrisy of the ‘conservative’ legacy media.” Peterson later deleted the tweet.

Watching right-wing culture warriors squabble over piles of cash, debating over how to apply the rules of capitalism to their content mill makes for an illuminating look behind the curtain; the “Big Tech censorship” debate is, at heart, a question of how much offensive content can advertisers stomach, before the money tap turns off.

Crowder, Shapiro, Owens, and Peterson all used the platforms of Big Tech to boost their brand and become wealthy, powerful influencers, all while bitterly complaining that the odds were stacked against them; the millions of dollars floating around the conservative media sphere tell a radically different story.